“True Japanese”

The August 19^th issue of Jinja Shinpō included an article reporting on the annual meeting of the association of priests with educational connections. In most cases, that means priests who are also school teachers. The theme of this meeting was “Raising True Japanese Rooted in the Shinto Spirit”.

I am very uncomfortable with that sort of slogan, but it is quite common in the Shinto world. In this post, I’m going to explain why I don’t like it.

First, a couple of things that aren’t the reason. It isn’t that I have any objection to the “Shinto spirit”, or indeed to Japan developing its culture in ways that are clearly distinct from other countries. As you might guess, I find the Shinto spirit congenial, and I think Japan should, in general, be doing more to preserve the distinctive aspects of its culture in the face of the tide of global homogenisation — which is not to say that it isn’t working on that already.

It also isn’t that I think there is hidden racism there. In some countries, that phrase would clearly be a racist dog whistle. “True American” or “True Englishman” would be anti-immigrant at the very least. In Japan, or at least in the Shinto community, the idea of a “True Japanese” seems to be almost entirely cultural. Indeed, pretty much every time my colleagues at Jinja Honchō introduce me to people I’m going to work with, they make a point of informing them that I am Japanese. This is a big topic that I don’t want to talk about in this post, so I will leave it here.

My concern is that the idea seems to suggest that there is only one way to be “truly” Japanese, and that jinja and priests should guide people to that path. I think both parts of that are seriously wrong-headed.

To take the more important aspect first, there are a lot of ways to be truly Japanese. At the simplest level, Japan has a rich culture, which means that you could have dozens or hundreds of people whose lives drew entirely from traditional Japanese culture, but emphasised different parts of it and so were utterly distinct from one another. Consider a sushi chef and a sumo wrestler, or a waka poet and an ama diver, for example. If we allow that Japanese culture has developed since 1850, we also have manga, trains, and computer games to consider.

That is not to say that anything goes. Someone entirely immersed in American culture is not Japanese — and there are at least as many ways to be American as to be Japanese. Similarly, it is not to say that anyone with any Japanese elements is entirely Japanese. I’m Japanese, but there are still British elements to my personal culture. That, of course, opens up a whole new range of ways to be Japanese — Japanese, with elements of something else. I think that such people are vital for the continued development of Japan. (The author declares competing interests…)

I have no objection to people choosing a subset of these possibilities as the sort of “Japanese” that they like, and trying to encourage that, even to the extent of teaching it at school. Indeed, I think that is probably a good thing, as long as you do not expect a complete absence of change over time. The problem I have is with describing that subset as “True Japanese”.

Some people might concede this general point, but argue that there is a common, shared core of values and cultural elements, and that these are what makes someone “truly Japanese”. I disagree. It is overwhelmingly likely that any randomly chosen pair of Japanese people share something, but different pairs will share different things, and there are, I am sure, some pairs that share nothing at all, even though both people are clearly Japanese. (I wasn’t born in Japan, and there are Japanese people who live outside the country, which means that “born in Japan”, “raised in Japan”, and “lives in Japan” are all off the table as candidates for universal features.)

So, I do not think there is any such thing as “True Japanese”. On the second point, given the extreme diversity of views and reluctance to pin down the details of anything in the Shinto community, the idea that Shinto priests are well placed to guide anyone to a particular path is… not one that I think benefits from great plausibility.